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TiVo Will Stream Content From The Web
Patik writes "According to an article at the NY Times, 'new TiVo technology... will allow users to download movies and music from the Internet to the hard drive on their video recorder.' This is TiVo's next big push for subscribers after being dumped by DirecTV Tuesday. Blockbuster, Netflix, and Real are also looking into distributing feature-length movies over the web."
Are they really prepared for this? Assuming that the movies are compressed down to 600-700MB, what happens when the 'latest blockbuster' is released an everyone tries to download it at once. Few companies can cope with bombardments of this nature, and Tivo would have to have an awful lot of capital ready for an investment of this size.
Well, let's see. You and a few of your friends can "do all this now".
MILLIONS of paying subscribers can't, without the help of friendly set-top boxes.
MILLIONS of paying subscribers aren't even aware that you COULD do this kind of thing.
Do the math.
For $3 a movie I can go to my video store and rent the DVD, rip it, and then burn as many copies as I want. This video on demand and Pay Per View stuff will never take off until they offer movies significantly cheaper than I could rent them for. I can watch a movie I rent as many times as I want for 5 days, make recordings of it, etc. With video on demand you get one shot and if you have to go to the bathroom, forget it.
Indeed, as Netflix practically begs you to make copies of your "rentals". I live about 10 miles away from a distribution center, so even USPS first class is next day for me. With their 5-disc $30 plan, I get about 20 new movies a month. And while such ripping violates the CDMA, it is an unenforcable aspect of copyright law. Back in the VHS days, rental stores assumed that most tapes were dubbed, and the MPAA did too, but there was nothing that could be done there, and little than can be here.
My solution would be this:
Look, people say that they want television on demand... but as a Tivo owner of less than a year, I will tell you straight that they don't know what they want, but as a Tivo owner, I do. They just want to watch their shows when they sit down. When the shows get there? Not an issue.
They should make channels to take the programs and run them at something like ten to twelve times as fast as normal, or put them in file format and stream them exceedingly fast similar to a network.
In a few minutes you could have it. More importantly, this solves the whole commercial skip issue. You could have custom commercials dropped in based on the person you were marketing to. Imagine they know I am a computer geek by my Tivo, and they can hit me with a custom Half-Life 2 commercial. Would I watch it? HELL YES I WOULD.
It is not like I don't want to see ads. I scan the Sunday ads for bargains. I look at the local bargain newspapers. The problem with ads is that I am seeing ads that aren't my thing. I don't care about pantyhose. I am a man. If you give me a new barbecue sauce ad, I'll watch it. If you give me ads for a new processor, YES, I'll watch it. Gimme a movie trailer. I'll watch it.
Yes, I know it is not truly "video on demand," but the network needs would be exponentially increased for a true video on demand system... it would get worse until there was packet gridlock. If you ran four channels at ten times speed, you would have the content of forty channels for four band slots. Think about all of the channels this way. Would the public care if it said please wait five minutes for delivery? Only if the TV had no way to hold programs and search for them, lying in wait. Or would they like to delete a whole slew of programs and have the Tivo pick out another ten of them for them while they were browsing? You could repeat content through the day, have a fast delvery, and still not have to drop a huge network on top of a cable system.
My issue is that I think that video on demand is overrated. I think with a hard drive on my end I don't care when I get it... I am not enough of a brat to need it "NOW! Mommy! NOW!" If you speed up television delivery, and as the hard drive TVs have already shown, that video on demand WON'T MATTER AT ALL when your system knows what you like and gives it to you in anticipation. If you think that I want to press a button and get a crystal clear movie instantly, you're wrong. I want to browse. But whether I browse on a network or in my box is irrelevant... because currently my Tivo gives me a slew of choices. There is just not that much content.
Imagine the network architecture issues when people start "browsing" video on demand, because in essence, their slapping around giant files like people slap through channels.
Sure, video on demand can be done. It just looks so cost prohibitive right now that it is insane. The only real benefit of video on demand would be for news. Then I can custom my newscast. Lose the biased reporters. As a newsman, I admit, that would rock.
Chances are if they can operate any of the number applications that will allow them to do this now they aren't going to be interested in an expensive set top box and subscription to do it either.
Dude, I can do this now. I can also build a MythTV box to handle the Tivo part.
But, like so many people who both can and cannot do the tech themselves, I'm happy to pay for an elegant, out-of-the-box solution.
When I was younger, sure, I was Mr. DIY. Now, with family and other grown-up obligations (as well as all that dough saved from being Mr. DIY 20 years ago...), I'll take the convenience, thanks.
Time and Money: They're the same things, and quite frequently the more you have of one the less you have of the other.
Typical attitude from 'non-reality' people on this board - 'I can do it manually by screwing with my system and drivers for hours. How can they sell a service that can do it at touch of a button reliably?'
Christ, use your head. MOST people are not WILLING to put that kind of time into something like this. Hell, I'm a programmer and techo-geek and all that crap and I'M not willing to do it. My time is more valuable to me than that.
The Cable Network does not want to sell you their programs a la carte sans branding. It is terrifying, especially to a lesser network, that one or more of their sleeper hits (say, "Queer Eye" on Bravo) will take on a life of its own without carrying along the mother network's name for the ride. When you watch that "one show" on Bravo or Home & Garden or E! or whatever that's broken away from the pack, you can be sure that the network is using every available promo slot to better itself in highly thought-out ways. (Not to mention, of course, the loss of the ad revenue in the national avails.) If delivery-by-Tivo were to exist as a supplement to the regular cable and dish delivery, and the latter subscriber numbers continue to rise, that's one thing, but if Tivo-only distribution were to cannibalize the "traditional" delivery, network execs would be throwing themselves from windows.
Then promptly watch ISP's shut down these early adopters for actually using their broadband connection at full capacity...
That's good, and it could be shrunk even further than that. However, a Tivo is not a computer running VideoLan, MPlayer, Xine, etc. It's general-purpose processor is incredibly low-powered (that's why your multimedia cabinet hasn't caught-on fire, if you know what I mean), and it is only able to handle MPEG2 video because of the fact that it has a hardware MPEG-2 encoder/decoder. Since no Tivos have MPEG-4 or AC3 hardware, there's no way they could even handle playback.
Although it is true that MPEG-4 can be extremely close to DVD-quality, you really don't get that kind of quality out of any existing codecs, even the famed Xvid. The fact that you can't see the difference is good for you, but not for anybody that has a large HDTV display, or the like.
Maybe theoretically, but I'd say less than 1/10th of 1% of cable-modem owners are getting that kind of bandwidth from their ISPs. Not because of congestion, but because they limit the bandwidth as much as possible, so they can charge more for better speeds. That's why Docsis has been so damn popular lately.
Also, even with unmetered cable modems, don't expect something like this to work. For one thing because once a large number of users are maxing-out their connection, no one of them is getting those massive speeds anymore, and the ISP is going to have to either raise rates, or limit individuals' speeds to cover bandwidth costs.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
going to tank cause of all the folks on my node d/l-ing movies! Thanks a lot! It's bad enough with the Linux distros and pr0n d/l-er's. What happens when the broadband ISPs start limiting everyone to X Gigs of d/l per month? Go rent the friggin DVD. It's a lot quicker.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
> Actually, Tivo wasn't 'dumped' by DirecTV.
DirecTV can't dump their Tivo stock and then disconnect DirecTivo. That would be trading based on inside information, and is illegal. They have to wait at least long enough so it looks like they got the disconnect idea after they got the idea to sell Tivo stock.
Just ask Martha Stewart.